January 14th, 2009 [Open]

Kelly chuckles nervously, remembering what happened last time she asked Grace to do an examination.

She's one of them, like the boy I couldn't save. At best this one more person we will have to kill, at worst she will infect the others......but what do we do.....let her die..."Believers, Jews, Sabaeans or Christians - whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right - shall have nothing to fear or regret”...Well, no matter what, no matter the fear, we must do right by everyone.....this may just be The Last Days.

"We have to help her, we can't let any die that we can save."

"What was that Crash?" George shouted down the stairwell.

George turned to the others and in a hushed voice contnues, "If we bring her up, she gets locked into a room. No debates."

"I agree, and we will need to keep a watch on her door at all times, and have someone regularly monitor her condition, and see to her well-being"

It sounds like she's going to be a caged animal... And you are acting more like a tool than the army is for keeping all of us in here...

"Charlotte. Forgive us for being so cautious..."

Before anyone can stop him, Henry crosses the gap, and moves to help Charlotte accross the debris.

"Which room should we give her?"

"Probably one near us. We can shift someone else to another room if we need to. I didn't quite anticipate this situation. I'll go try to work it out."

Spoiler:

Henry stands next to Charlotte acting as a crutch, and supporting her weight as the rest of the group looks on, and Officer Taylor leaves to procure accomodations for her. He opens his mouth to assure the rest of the group,

"I know she's not contagious... If I didn't turn, and I was beaten silly by one of these things, then she is going to be fine."

I hope that's how it works, cause if not, I'm a fuckin' idiot for helping this chick... Keep thinking like that and you'll go far oh selfish one... shut up... Chill out Henry... Get ahold of yourself... Damnit, don't lose your mind now!!!

As she is helped through the debris pile, you can see that she is an attractive college-age girl. She looks no older than her early 20's, though her large, haunted hazel eyes would lead you to believe she was a hundred years old. Through the dirt and grime, Charlotte has light brown hair, tied back in a pony-tail. She has a number of cuts and scratches though nothing that looks to be too bad.

Charlotte attempts to better explain herself, possibly in the hopes of staving off being caged in a hotel room. Looking to George, she says "I'm sorry for all the noise...I think I knocked a lamp off your pile. That was probably what you heard..."

With a glance at Kelly she explains her current physical state. "I was hiding in the basement of an old house...about a half a block away...that way," she points down the street, towards the center of the city. "It was my boyfriend's house...his parent's house. A few nights ago, during the riots, some people broke into the house. Will, my boyfriend, and his dad, they tried to defend the house while Mary, Will's mom, she and I locked ourselves in their old basement." You can tell the girl is fighting back tears, but you guess that the terror of the last several days has done wonders to steel her resolve.

"We...we heard Will, Mr. Fleming, and the...the intruders screaming, some gunshots, and then all we didn't hear Will or Mr...Rob, Will or Rob anymore."

"We hid down there, in the basement for a few more hours after we thought the looters left...and then Mary, Mrs. Fleming, she opened the basement door and went out into the house. She told me to stay down there, so I did. I heard her yell, and then I saw her running towards the basement door when she was pulled down from behind."

"It was like I couldn't stop looking...but Will...what was Will, and Mr. Fleming...they...they ate her. Started to...and then they came for me. I don't know how I got the door closed and barred again, but I did...but...one of them, I don't know which...they clawed at me...scratched me."

We should kill her now... Oh God, did I just say that?
Simon stumbles as they return up the stairs falling hard against the wall, as he realizes that he's changed over the last few days.

He rights himself and waves off any attempts at help and continues to climb the stairs.

Kelly looks around to the group, trying to keep everyone's safety in mind. I think the "change" happened pretty quickly for the boy I killed. "Charlotte, there's not a whole lot we can do for you other than offer you some refuge. That being said, we are also trying to keep this group as safe as possible. I have no idea what causes the change. You were scratched...that could do it. We will bring you in with one stipulation. You are going to be quaranteed for a time we deem to be appropriate. I am not even sure what that means yet. We will bring you water and food rations. We can't waste too much time guarding your door etc. so we need to have your word. You need to stay in the room. If you do decide to try to come out our hospitality will run out quickly. Is that okay with you?"

"I...I guess. Anything has to be better than that basement."

With a look of sullen resignation, Charlotte allows herself to be escorted to a room and put under observation. Many of the other survivors are peeking out of their doors, drawn by the commotion. Many are whispering to themselves, passing details about the situation back to others in their shared hotel rooms.

As things begin to die down, you all inspect the barricade that Charlotte climbed over and through to reach you, making sure that it is still secure. It appears that Charlotte did no lasting damage to your fortifications, and it takes no time at all to satisfy yourselves that you are safe behind the pile of furniture.

While working on the makeshift ramparts, Karl approaches your group.

"I've been thinking - the generator...it's supposed to run for up to 12 hours, on a full tank of gasoline. We shut the thing off during the initial outag for periods of two hours during the day to preserve it's fuel. At night we ran it pretty much full tilt to preserve heat in the hotel."

"If you haven't noticed...it's starting to get pretty cold in here, and it's snowing again outside. We're going to need fuel to power that generator to maintain heat in here, or else we'll all be freezing to...undeath."

Now that he mentions it, it is starting to get cool in the hotel. A building this big probably took a long time to lose a noticeable amount of heat, but now, with several hours passed and the cold weather outside, you can feel a chill in the air.

Karl continues: "We should probably try the upper floors and block all the vents above us...that'll force more heat to the lower levels."

One more thing to add to the list, you suppose.

Damn it. We can't do this alone we need help. We need to see if we can have some supplies dropped....something...anything.

Kelly tries to pull Simon, George, Henry, and Jimmy together for a meeting of the minds so to speak. "Okay, maybe things will be setteled for awhile. We need to start thinking about what to do. If we need to leave it sounds like we need to do so during daylight hours. I think first we should try to make contact again with someone. I can turn on my radio and try again...", Kelly blanches at the thought of what she heard last time and after a brief pause she continues, "...you know...see if this time we could get military people. And we could try to use a cell phone and call local media or someone to find out if they can drop some supplies for us. Namely food, water and gas apparently. And Karl's right about the vents to. What do you guys think?"

George was still tired when the girl came to them through the barricade, perhaps if he had more then 2 hours of sleep he would have protested more when she was given shelter with the others.

He was starting to regret not going with the others, he shook his head a bit.

"That's stupid. We're safer here." He wasn't so sure.

"We need to check the upper floors anyway. Let's clear up there, we can check all the rooms, gather what supplies we can and close the vents as we go." George looked around as he thought.

"We should as close off any here that we're not using."

Thinking for a moment Simon adds, "I agree, but if it's safe up there, we might want to think about relocating. Hot air rising and all that. I still think that the top floor would be safer then here. We are also going to need to make a gas run. Freezing to death might be better then turning...but I would rather keep alive...and warm."

"I'll go wherever I'm needed most. If it's a gas run, or clearing the floors upstairs, either way. We need to post someone to keep an eye on the stairwells, and also keep an eye on Charlotte. Maybe Grace can keep an eye on her? Also I think we need some way to have the people on this floor communicate to us if they need help."

Hmmm... That's easy... Get gas, and they can call any of the phones upstairs... Of course that means going outside, and dealing with the dead gas station attendants....... Fill her up.... With Brains.........

Kelly looks around a little overwhelmed. Get gas...move and secure floors, guard duty. Come on...you 5 do it all, we'll all cower in fear in our rooms that you so nicely secured for us and eat and drink what you've also gotten for us. Come on Kelly...now is not the time to get resentful. You are a trained emergency responder...yeah...trained to deal with the living.

"Okay guys, we really can't do all of this with FIVE of us trying to take care of thirty. We need more help. We need to gather everyone together and see what they can do. This is a life and...undeath situation. I don't think we can keep protecting them from the reality."

"CRAP!" Simon bursts out, clearly frustrated. "I've gotta be still tired. I just realized. How the hell are we going to get it out of the pumps without electricity? It's possible that only the area around the hotel is out but chances are the military has cut the power coming into the city. We are going to need to siphon it from some of the cars in the parking garage or the mall parking lot. Thats assuming that the mall has a parking lot. I didn't get a good look at it on my way in."

He thumps down on a chair annoyed at himself for not thinking the gas situation though.

Karl jumps in to the conversation.

"The garage is on the way to mall, and it just so happens that there's set of security stairs that lead directly down to the first level of the parking garage, bypassing all the stairways we've blocked off. But I don't know how you're going to siphon out gas, though I do think there are some gas cans down by the burner in the basement..."

Spoiler:

Karl jangles his large keychain, replete with keycards and a wide assortment of small metal keys nervously. "I'm willing to go with you folks if you're heading out to get gas. It's going to get cold in here awfully fast I'm afraid."